The Best Laptops for College Students

Based on the more than 500 hours we spent researching and testing close to a hundred laptops over the past few years, we think that the Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UA is the best laptop for most college students because it offers the most value at its affordable price. It has solid performance, and its battery life can last for a full day of classes. It’s slim and light, it has a responsive and accurate trackpad, and its backlit keyboard is comfortable enough.

We also have picks for students who can spend more, are enrolled in photography and film programs, or play games outside of class. Our picks are best for college and graduate students, but they’ll work for those in high school, too—we expect these laptops to last at least five years, so they should carry you through the entirety of high school, college, or graduate school (but not all three).

Our pick

Buying Options

The ZenBook is also amazingly well-made for the price, with a powerful processor, a 1920×1080-pixel display, and a decent webcam—we recommend the UX331UA-AS51 configuration with an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8 GB of memory, and a 256 GB solid-state drive. But compared to the Dell XPS 13, its keyboard is less enjoyable to type on and its battery life is about two hours less. It also lacks a fast, versatile Thunderbolt 3 port, which will become more useful over the next few years as more accessories support the standard. But for around $800, it’s the best option for college students.

Buying Options

If you’re willing to pay more for a better battery life, screen, and keyboard, get the Dell XPS 13 or the non-Touch Bar 13-inch MacBook Pro, depending on which operating system you prefer. The late-2017 non-touchscreen Dell XPS 13 is the best Windows ultrabook we’ve found. Not only is its battery life among the longest we’ve seen; the XPS 13 is more compact and better to type with than the Asus ZenBook. To read more about the Dell XPS 13, head to our review of the best Windows ultrabooks.

The 2017 MacBook Pro is much more expensive than the ZenBook (and even the Dell XPS 13), but it’s the least-expensive Mac we recommend for college students. It has all-day battery life, a lightweight aluminum body, and one of the best trackpads around, along with good performance and a fantastic display. However, it has only two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone/mic jack—that lack of legacy ports may be an inconvenience for students who already own USB-A printers or hard drives. For a more in-depth analysis of the 2017 MacBook Pro, check out our guide to finding the right MacBook. If you’re buying for college, going through Apple’s store for education can often get you extras like free Beats headphones and a discount on the computer and AppleCare.

We usually recommend laptops with 256 GB of storage, but college students may be better off getting 128 GB to save some money and relying on cloud storage to store files (or getting an external hard drive if they really run out of room).

Buying Options

If you’re a film or photography student who needs a laptop for photo and video editing, we recommend the Dell XPS 15 or the 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro. They’re much more expensive and have battery life that’s two to three hours shorter than our main picks, but their screens are better quality and higher-resolution, their processors are more powerful, and they have dedicated video cards to provide smooth performance while editing video footage and doing other demanding creative jobs. Head to our review of the best laptops for photo and video editing to read more about these picks.

Buying Options

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming is the best gaming laptop for most college students. Although it costs around $100 more than the ZenBook and it’s about 25 percent longer and deeper (and more than three pounds heavier), the Dell has an impressive dedicated graphics card for playing video games such as Overwatch or Doom. It has a decent keyboard and trackpad, and a great screen, plus it’s super easy to upgrade. Gaming laptops are not known for their battery life, though; the Inspiron’s battery life was average, at 4 hours and 27 minutes. Its fans were also the loudest of all the budget gaming laptops we tested. Check out our guide to the best budget gaming laptops to learn more.

If our picks are too expensive and you’re willing to compromise battery life, portability, or performance for a cheaper laptop (or laptop replacement) that can handle basic computer work, we also have a section on the best budget alternatives for college students.

Why you should trust us

Wirecutter’s team of computer reviewers has been researching and testing laptops since 2013, and the members of that team have more than 20 years of collective experience reviewing all kinds of laptops. We’ve spent more than 500 hours researching and testing hundreds of laptops—everything from portable ultrabooks to Chromebooks to gaming laptops to laptops for creative professionals and beyond—in the past few years.

How we picked

Students need a great laptop that’ll last for years of taking notes, writing papers at 3 in the morning, editing photos for a group project, or playing Overwatch. But choosing the right one can be more challenging than writing a thousand good words on Proust.

The most important features in a laptop for college students are value, battery life, size and weight, keyboard and trackpad, performance, storage, screen, and ports. Not all college students will have the same priorities, though. For example, a film student may need a more expensive laptop that can handle editing video on a high-quality screen; a student who enjoys playing video games might be willing to put up with a larger, heavier laptop to get a decent graphics card.

These are the features that you should look for in a laptop for college, but your priorities may vary depending on the work you do:

Price and value: College is expensive—students have to pay for tuition, housing, textbooks, and other miscellaneous fees and costs—so a laptop’s price-to-performance ratio is the most important factor. Students should get the least expensive laptop that will handle their coursework and last through all of college.

Battery life: Because students rarely work in a single location, the longer the laptop’s battery life, the better. A laptop should last a full day of classes so students can concentrate on taking notes and doing homework instead of worrying about finding an outlet.

Size and weight: You don’t want a massive laptop weighing down your backpack as you sprint across campus to class. A 13-inch laptop that weighs around three pounds or less provides the best balance of screen real estate and portability for most college students. A 15-inch laptop isn’t necessary unless you plan on using your laptop to play games or edit video or photos.

Keyboard and trackpad: Your laptop’s keyboard and touchpad should be accurate and responsive to your touch and comfortable to use for long periods of time.

Performance:

Processor: A seventh- or eighth-generation Intel Core ultra-low-power processor, meaning an Intel Core i5-7200U or i5-8250U processor or better will be powerful enough for most coursework. If you plan to use your laptop for gaming or film and photo assignments, we recommend a more powerful quad-core processor.

Memory: We recommend 8 GB of RAM as a minimum for browsing the Web, sending emails, and writing research papers, and 16 GB for students who have a more demanding workload.

Graphics card: You need a dedicated graphics card only if you’re a gamer or a film or photography student.

Storage: Solid-state drives are much faster than hard drives, and they’re affordable in all our picks. We recommend that most college students get 128 GB of storage, relying on cloud storage or an external hard drive if you need more room. Gamers, as well as students enrolled in photo and film programs, are probably better off spending more for at least 256 GB of built-in storage.

Display: You should get a laptop with at least a 1920×1080 IPS display, since you’ll be staring at your computer screen every day. Photo and film students should invest in a higher-quality, higher-resolution IPS screen.

Ports: While a lack of ports didn’t disqualify any of our contenders, we prefer to see at least a couple USB 3.0 Type-A ports, as well as a Thunderbolt 3 port for future-proofing. An SD card slot is useful if you’re in a photo or film program.

Our pick: Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UA

Our pick

Buying Options

The Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UA is the best laptop for most students heading to campus because it offers the best performance and features at an affordable price. The ZenBook 13 costs around $800 at the time of writing, has enough battery life to get you through a day of classes, is slim and light, and has a responsive trackpad. It also performs well enough for schoolwork while providing a nice screen and a variety of new and old ports. We recommend the UX331UA-AS51 configuration with an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8 GB of memory, and a 256 GB solid-state drive. Although the ZenBook has two hours less battery life, a less comfortable keyboard than other premium ultrabooks, and no Thunderbolt 3 port, it still meets most college students’ needs.

The ZenBook 13 can survive a full day of lectures and seminars, even if you can’t find an outlet to plug into during or between classes. In our battery test, the ZenBook lasted 6 hours, 39 minutes; its score isn’t exceptional, but it’s enough juice for a day of work. It was about two hours behind our upgrade pick, the Dell XPS 13, which gave us 8 hours, 23 minutes on a single charge. If you tend to work away from an outlet for more than 8 hours, it may be worth spending more on one of our upgrade picks.

The ZenBook is about an inch deeper than the Dell XPS 13, measuring 12.2 inches long, 8.5 inches deep, and half an inch thick. It’s about the same size as the MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017). And at 2.5 pounds, the ZenBook is lighter than both our upgrade picks. All good backpacks for college students have enough room to fit the ZenBook, and the ZenBook’s light weight is a real asset for a college student on the move.

The ZenBook’s keyboard is comfortable enough to slog through that paper on Cartesian dualism, even if its keys feel a little mushier than we’d like. Photo: Michael Hession

The ZenBook 13 has a backlit keyboard, and though its keys were comfortable to type on, they felt mushier than we’d like. And when I hit the spacebar on the rightmost centimeter—beneath the M key—it frequently didn’t register the input, causing me to stringabunchofwordstogether. Dropped spaces didn’t happen when I pressed the spacebar further toward the center, but the experience made the ZenBook more frustrating to type on than our upgrade picks. The trackpad has a satisfying travel and clicking noise when pressed, though. It was responsive and accurate, and we had no problems using it for two- and three-finger gestures, or zooming in and out on items.

The ZenBook 13 has a mix of new and old ports, so it should be compatible with any of your existing peripherals as well as new ones you accrue throughout the next few years. The machine has one USB-C port, but it’s USB 3.1 Gen 1, and the laptop cannot charge via this port—we’d rather Asus include a faster, more capable Thunderbolt 3 port. It also has two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, a combo headphone/microphone jack, a microSD card slot, and a proprietary charging port, and it supports current-generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2.

The ZenBook 13’s webcam is in the top-middle of its screen, ideal for calling home or video-chatting with classmates for a group project. Photo: Michael Hession

The colors on the UX331UA’s 13.3-inch 1920×1080 IPS screen are a bit cool—blues and greens show up more prominently than reds and yellows—but the screen is otherwise decent. The ZenBook 13’s webcam is in the top-middle of the screen, and although its video quality can’t match that of an external webcam, it’s fine for calling home or videoconferencing with classmates to discuss a group project. The Asus also has a fast, responsive fingerprint reader on the right-side of the laptop, underneath the right-arrow button, for Windows Hello login support. Head to our review of the best Windows ultrabooks to read more about the Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UA.

Buying Options

If you’re willing to pay around $400 more for better battery life, screen, and keyboard in a more compact laptop, the non-touchscreen Dell XPS 13 (late 2017) is a great choice. Its battery life is among the longest we’ve seen; it’s thin and light; it has a great keyboard and trackpad; and it has fast performance, a healthy selection of ports, and a good screen. We recommend getting the configuration with an Intel Core i7-8550U processor, 8 GB of RAM, a 256 GB solid-state drive, and a fingerprint reader. (We don’t recommend the USB-C–only Dell New XPS 13 for students while the older model is still available; its lack of legacy ports can make printing and connecting to other peripherals a pain.)

The non-touch XPS 13’s battery life is among the best you’ll find in a Windows ultrabook at 8 hours, 23 minutes in our Web-browsing battery tests. Most of the models we’ve tested in the last two years have lagged behind the XPS 13 by at least an hour, including our top pick for students, the Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UA, which lasted for 6 hours and 39 minutes.

The Dell XPS 13 and the Asus ZenBook are similarly sized, with minor trade-offs in physical dimensions and weight: The Dell is more compact than the ZenBook by almost an inch in depth, while the the ZenBook is imperceptibly lighter than the Dell. Both laptops weigh less than three pounds and are small enough to fit into a backpack.

The Dell’s keyboard is comfortable and responsive, though the backlit keys are a little shallow. The XPS 13 has a better trackpad than the ZenBook, too—it was accurate and reactive to our touch, with precise tap-to-click and a satisfying physical click. The trackpad never dropped swipes in our testing, and it worked well for two- and three-finger gestures.

The Dell’s 13.3-inch IPS screen offers good color reproduction and fantastic viewing angles, as well as a matte coating that prevents glare. This makes it better than the ZenBook for watching movies after you’ve finished your work. The 1080p screen is particularly immersive because of its teeny-tiny, 5.2 mm bezel, but the narrow bezel pushes the webcam to the bottom-left edge, above the Esc key. Because of this placement, the camera will give your parents—or, worse, your classmates or professors—an unflattering view up your nose during video calls.

The Dell has a Thunderbolt 3 port—which the ZenBook lacks—that you can use to transfer data, connect an external display, or charge mobile devices or the laptop itself. It also has two USB 3.0 ports, a headset jack, an SD card reader, and a Noble Lock slot. We appreciate the selection of new and legacy ports.

Buying Options

If you need a Mac, either because of personal preference or school requirements, we recommend the 2017 non-Touch Bar 13-inch MacBook Pro. It has all-day battery life, a lightweight aluminum body, and a fantastic trackpad and display. But its keyboard is shallow, and it has only two Thunderbolt 3 ports, with no legacy ports. We recommend getting the configuration with a 2.3 GHz dual-core 7th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB (or 256 GB, if you can afford it) solid-state drive. If you buy it through Apple’s Education storefront you can get a student discount and (often) other perks like free Beats headphones. You can also check out refurbished models to see if you can get a good deal.1

The MacBook Pro is around the same size as the Asus ZenBook UX331UA at 12 by 8.4 by 0.6 inches, but it’s a half-pound heavier. Still, at around three pounds, the MacBook Pro is light enough to carry around campus without adding too much weight to your bag.

The MacBook Pro has a thin keyboard with shallow travel. The Asus ZenBook and Dell’s keyboards are springier and more comfortable to use for long periods of time. The MacBook Pro’s trackpad, however, is the best we’ve used on a laptop. Because it has no hinge, you can click anywhere on the touchpad and receive the same response, and its haptic feedback is satisfying.

The 2017 MacBook Pro has a fantastic 13-inch screen; its 2560×1600 Retina display has more pixels than the Asus and Dell’s 1920×1080 screens, making everything look crisper and more detailed. Its webcam, like the ZenBook’s, is placed intuitively in the top-center of the screen.

The MacBook has two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Because these are the only two ports—aside from a 3.5 mm headphone/mic jack—you’ll need a hub or adapter if you have any hard drives, scanners, printers, or card readers that use USB-A. Similarly, if you want to use an external display or projector, you’ll need the right adapter.

The MacBook Pro comes with the best support of any computer brand. Apple includes one year of coverage, which you can extend to three years by paying for AppleCare+. You can visit the Genius Bar in any Apple retail store for in-person support instead of having to ship your laptop off to a Windows manufacturer when you run into an issue.

Budget options

The Asus Chromebook Flip C302CA is fast, light, and comfortable to use. Its screen also flips all the way around for use as a (bulky) tablet. Photo: Michael Hession

If our picks are too expensive and you’re willing to make some sacrifices for a cheaper computer that can still handle basic work, consider these budget options. Keep in mind that they all make serious trade-offs—shorter battery life, bulkier size, or more-limited functionality—to achieve their more-affordable price tags, and they’re not likely to last as long as our picks. Despite each budget option’s particular setbacks, however, each provides good-enough performance for less money than our main picks.

Buying Options

If you can complete all of your work in a Web browser, we recommend the Asus Chromebook Flip 302CA. The Flip provides enough battery life for a full day of classes, and it has a compact body with a touchscreen, a 360-degree hinge, and a comfortable keyboard. It’s fast enough for tab-heavy browser work, too. However, Chromebooks may have trouble connecting to campus printers, and they’re not good for people who need access to Mac or Windows apps for photo, video, or audio editing, or other specialized software like MatLab. They can run Android apps and browser-based alternatives, but that’s not good enough if your coursework requires a specific app. To read more about the Flip or to check out other, even cheaper, options, see our review of the best Chromebooks.

Buying Options

If you need to save some cash but still run Windows, get the Asus VivoBook Flip 14, which has a solid processor, 64 GB of speedy eMMC storage, 4 GB of RAM, and a bright, 14-inch screen. It’s by far the best Windows laptop you’ll find for the price. But we strongly recommend saving up for the ZenBook 13 UX331UA, which will feel faster to use, is quite a bit smaller and lighter, and has double the storage, as well as a better keyboard and trackpad. To read more about the VivoBook Flip, check out our review of the best laptops under $500.

Buying Options

If you need a Mac and absolutely can’t spend $300 more for the 2017 13-inch MacBook Pro, get a MacBook Air. Although it’s technically a current model, its design hasn’t been updated in years. Still, it offers up to 12 hours of battery life (according to Apple) in a thin, 3-pound body, a great keyboard and a solid selection of legacy ports. However, it has an older Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, and a 1440×900 display—that’s not even 1080p. The only two reasons to choose a MacBook Air are if you require macOS and you want the legacy ports or if it’s all your budget will allow. As with the MacBook Pro, buying through Apple’s student portal can get you a discount, and often free headphones. We also have a guide to help you choose between the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and MacBook if you’re still unsure.

Buying Options

Can an iPad replace your laptop? Simply put: If your school requires any Mac- or Windows-only apps, you can’t use an iPad in place of an actual laptop. But if all you need a laptop for is browsing the Web, sending emails, and using Microsoft Office, consider the 9.7-inch iPad (6th Generation). Although a tablet doesn’t support desktop apps, the iPad will run longer on a charge than any of our picks and weigh less. Head over to our reviews of the best tablets and pro tablets to read more about these picks.

If you’re a film or photo student: Dell XPS 15 or 15-inch MacBook Pro

Our picks for photography and film students have high-resolution screens, powerful processors, and dedicated graphics cards for smooth performance while editing video footage. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

If you’re a film or photo student who needs a laptop for heavy video and image work, our main picks can’t handle your workload. Their screens aren’t high-resolution or high-quality enough, their processors are less powerful, and they don’t have the dedicated graphics card that a laptop needs to be able to handle graphics processing alongside other work. Get the Dell XPS 15 or the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017) instead.

Buying Options

The Dell XPS 15 is the best option for film or photo students because it has a powerful processor and graphics card, as well as the best out-of-the-box color accuracy and widest color gamut of any Windows laptop we tested. Plus it has fast 4K rendering speeds, all the essential ports, and a good keyboard and trackpad. It’s light and portable, too, which makes it easy to carry around campus.

Buying Options

Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro (2017) is the best Mac laptop for photo and video editing. The MacBook Pro’s 15.4-inch Retina display (2880×1800) is as color-accurate as the Dell XPS 15’s, and the MacBook Pro’s screen reproduces slightly more of the sRGB color gamut. Although it has the best screen and trackpad we’ve used on a laptop, the MacBook Pro has a shallow keyboard and it lacks legacy ports—it has four Thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone/mic jack instead. The 15-inch MacBook Pro also had much slower 4K rendering speeds in our Adobe Premiere Pro test than the Dell XPS 15 because Premiere Pro supports hardware acceleration on Windows but not macOS. (Adobe says it’s working on adding hardware acceleration to the Mac version.) If your school requires that you work with Adobe Premiere Pro or you already own a lot of USB-A peripherals, you may want to consider the Dell.

If you play games: Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming

Get the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming if you want a laptop for taking notes during class and playing The Witcher 3 afterwards. Photo: Michael Hession

If you play video games in your spare time, our main picks won’t cut it—they don’t have dedicated graphics cards, and they don’t have effective cooling systems to manage noise and heat. Budget gaming laptops cost more than the ZenBook and tend to be a lot bulkier and heavier. Battery life as also often a lot worse, but gaming laptops are the best option if you like to blow off steam in Overwatch.

Buying Options

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming is the best option for students who need an affordable laptop for taking notes in class that can also play games well. It has middle-of-the-road battery life for a budget gaming laptop—4 hours, 21 minutes—but it’s by far the least expensive laptop with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q graphics card, which is fast enough to support VR and to play most modern games at 1920×1080 resolution. The Inspiron 15 7000 has a decent keyboard and trackpad, a great screen, and is super easy to upgrade. But it has poor battery life—like most gaming laptops—and its fans get distractingly loud when gaming. The Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming weighs 5.8 pounds, more than 3 whole pounds heavier than the ZenBook, and it’s quite a bit bulkier, too: As a 15-inch laptop, the Dell measures 15.3 by 10.8 by 1 inches, compared to the ZenBook’s 12.2 by 8.5 by 0.5 inches.

What to look forward to

Apple has finally announced a new version of the 13-inch MacBook Air—which was for several years our favorite MacBook model. Until this year, it hadn’t seen a significant spec upgrade since 2013 or so, and its design hadn’t changed since it debuted in 2010. The 2018 MacBook Air uses a similar wedge-shaped design, but it’s a bit smaller (Apple says it has 17 percent less volume) and about 4 ounces lighter (2.75 pounds) than its predecessor. It also gets a number of major upgrades first seen in the MacBook Pro line. Those include a Retina display, two Thunderbolt 3 ports (and no others, aside from a headphone jack), a Touch ID sensor (but no Touch Bar), and the third-generation version of Apple’s polarizing low-travel butterfly-switch keyboard. The new Air also uses Intel’s eighth-generation dual-core Core i5 processors, similar to the ones in the 12-inch MacBook.

The base configuration will cost $1,200 for a 1.6 GHz processor, 8 GB of memory, and 128 GB of solid-state storage; 16 GB of RAM and up to 1.5 TB of storage are available as upgrade options. It’s available for preorder, and will ship starting November 7.

At WWDC18, Apple announced macOS Mojave; it’s available now. It introduces a new dark mode, which gives the entire interface a black theme for better contrast and easier viewing in low light. And Safari now helps to prevent third-party efforts to figure out what machine you’re using and thus track you (also known as “fingerprinting”).

Mojave drops support for several generations of Macs, however, so if you bought your computer before mid-2012, you’re likely stuck with High Sierra. Security updates and third-party software updates for older computers should continue for at least a few more years.

Footnotes

You’re more likely to find a refurbished late-2016 13-inch MacBook Pro than the 2017 model, but that’s okay, because the two laptops are nearly identical. The only differences are an updated processor and Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 in the newer model, which should result in only minor increases in performance and battery life.